Supervisory Control for Behavior Composition

We relate behavior composition, a synthesis task studied in AI, to supervisory control theory from the discrete event systems field. In particular, we show that realizing (i.e., implementing) a target behavior (e.g., a house surveillance system) by suitably coordinating a collection of available behaviors (e.g., doors, lights, cameras, etc.) amounts to imposing a supervisor onto a special discrete event system. Such a link allows us to leverage on the solid foundations and extensive work on discrete event systems, including borrowing tools and ideas from it.